Tag Archives: coffee

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If there’s a time and a place for everything, mornings are definitely the time to feel crummy, complain about how sleepy you are, half-glare at the people around you in a groggy haze, and otherwise try and drag yourself out of the wonderful sleep you were having just minutes ago. But being the geek that I am, I’ve discovered that little technological advances can make some morning steps at least marginally more pleasurable. I’m not saying that technology is the answer to everything, but I’ve found a peculiar sort of delight in streamlining some activities. I’d like to take a minute to explain what I mean.

A few weeks ago, I made my way to Best Buy to buy two small appliances, with the hope of making my mornings better. Yes, the retailer sells more than laptops and PCs, and while browsing their aisles, I settled on a Keurig Elite SingleServe Brewer (B48), and a Philips Sonicare – DiamondClean Rechargeable Toothbrush. I think you see where I’m going with this. Who wants to brew a fresh pot of coffee every morning, or fuss around with instant powder, when there’s an alternative at the ready? And what self-respecting geek wouldn’t look forward to cleaning his teeth with a brush that vibrates at 31,500 “rpm” and charges through electromagnetic induction? Yeah, that was my thinking and here’s how these two machines performed.

Taking a tiny sip of a piping hot drink is the usual way to figure out its temperature. That, or feeling the cup with your hands, but that can be hard with some materials. The Smart Lid hopes to give you a visual cue, informing you of the drink’s temperature before you use your own body as a thermometer. It turns red when the contents are at 120°F (48°C) or above, which seems like an appropriate middle ground. The lids come in packs of 1,000 of either the lid alone, or the lid with a 8oz or 12oz cup, with prices starting as low as $62. Clearly restaurants will have more use for this, but there is a 40 lid/cup pack for $30 that you may be tempted to use at home.

This Douwe Egberts coffee machine looks like a typical machine, but you’ll soon realize that not everything is at seems when you take a closer look. It doesn’t have the usual slots where you’re supposed to push your coins or paper bills in, but it’s equipped with a facial recognition system instead. Don’t expect to get a cup of coffee if you’re fully awake and perky, because the machine has been programmed to only dole out free cups of Joe to people who are yawning (or in the process of yawning.)

The international coffee company chose to install the unusual coffee machine in the busy O.R. Tambo International Airport in South Africa, where over 210 cups of coffee were given away to tired and weary travelers.

How many times have you burnt your tongue when you took a sip of coffee that was still too hot to consume? In my case, I’d say it’s one too many. I hate the sandpaper-like feeling of a burnt tongue that makes eating and drinking uncomfortable for a couple of days. Of course, you can avoid this simply by checking the beverage’s temperature before taking a sip. Or you can just get one of these temperature-sensing mugs from Brando.

Anyone who’s been reading the site for any period of time knows that we’re deeply in love with bacon. Better yet, we think bacon mated with maple is as wonderful as Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Abbott and Costello… or peanut butter and chocolate, to get away from entertainment duos of yesteryear metaphors. Now that we’ve seen Maple Bacon Morning Coffee from Boca Java, we will not rest until we get some and make it part of our breakfast. At $8 for an 8oz. bag, it’s not going to break anyone’s bank.

Feeling like a strong dark shot of espresso? Or a nice long Americano? Whichever it is, there’s no need to have two separate cups to hold your drinks, when you can have just one. The C’UP combines the two in one package, though we can’t exactly say it’s the most beautifully designed cup on the planet. As a matter of fact, you’d think they’d charge next to nothing to make up for the sub-par design, but what’s happened is rather the opposite: it’s an outrageous 40€ (or about $53) for just one. A set of six will set you back 220€ (or about $288). But hey, fools and their money are easily parted.

Not much is known about the above machine, the Espresso Veloce. It looks like a tiny V12 engine, but it makes coffee of a quality that we can only assume is superior. It’s made from premium materials like titanium, magnesium, and aluminum, and is limited in production to just 500 units. This means it’s likely in the same price range as the kinds of cars that sport V12 engines. It does seem to come with some nifty piston-shaped mugs, though that’s pretty much all we can tell you about it.

If it weren’t for coffee, I have a feeling half the people in the world wouldn’t be able to get out of bed every day. Coffee is awesome for a hundred reasons and one, one of which is the fact that you can create awesome works of art on the coffee foam. That’s what Japanese artist and engineer Yuko Honda does and she’s pretty amazing at it, too.

After seeing countless landscape and Grumpy Cat-inspired latte art, you might’ve thought that you’ve already seen it all. Not quite, because Honda’s uber geeky latte art is in a league of its own.

When stuff like burger wrappers become edible, you kind of get the feeling that more things are bound to follow suit. After all, who’d have thunk it? I’m still iffy over the whole edible wrapper thing though, although I am kind of curious.

Hot on its heels, though, are these edible cookie cups that aren’t that much unusual since they are just basically cookies. They’re still extremely creative and will probably be very appealing to coffee drinkers who love to chew on some cookies while they sip their joe.

OhGizmo! is a frequently updated blog that focuses on covering items that will appeal to a very specific and often very passionate audience: the geek. Aside from the fare of innovative consumer electronic products, the reader can expect to find news about geek culture, absurd inventions, awe inspiring technology, and an ever growing assortment of articles that we like to think fit within our view of what we’re calling the Geek Lifestyle.